A Jersey City man who ran a welfare fraud scheme that resulted in a nine-year prison sentence is now working for the Jersey City Employment and Training Program (JCETP), the nonprofit run by former Gov. Jim McGreevey.

Eugene McKnight, 64, who managed Ward F City Councilwoman Diane Coleman’s campaign, joined JCETP last month and earns a $75,000 salary working with ex-offenders as part of the nonprofit’s prisoner reentry program.

McGreevey defended the move, saying McKnight is uniquely qualified to help the nonprofit set up the program — which McGreevey and Mayor Steve Fulop hope will be a model for the nation.

“There are thousands of people coming back home from incarceration every year into Jersey City,” McGreevey said. “Here was a man who had done wrong, had served his time and wanted to give back, and to explicitly work with ex-offenders.”

He added that McKnight was a “tremendous acquisition.”

Fulop recruited McGreevey last July to run JCETP.

McKnight could not be reached for comment.

In the 1980s, McKnight, then the director of the city’s Human Resources Department, masterminded a scheme in which he approved rental assistance and welfare checks for friends and employees, who then cashed them and split the money with McKnight.

The scheme, which went on for four years, inflated Jersey City’s welfare rolls by 1,500 participants while McKnight and others walked away with $4.2 million, officials said at the time.

In 1992, McKnight pleaded guilty to racketeering and tampering with evidence in what was considered one of the state’s largest public corruption conspiracies ever. Twenty-two other individuals were charged alongside McKnight, who was sentenced to nine years behind bars and ordered to pay $76,000 in restitution and a $5,000 fine.

According to state Department of Corrections records, McKnight served about 18 months in prison and was released on parole in May 1994; he went missing from parole in November 1996 and was sent back to prison in February 1999 on a parole violation. He was released from prison in August 2000, according to the DOC.

McKnight helped engineer Coleman’s initial 2012 election to the City Council, when she became the fifth vote that allowed Fulop, then a Ward E councilman, to take control of the nine-member body.

Asked to comment, city spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill said McKnight’s hiring is not “political,” adding that Fulop has no say in JCETP’s personnel moves. JCETP is a nonprofit that operates with public dollars.

Minutes after Coleman declined to comment. Roger Jones, who chairs JCETP’s board of directors, phoned The Jersey Journal and said Coleman did not pressure JCETP to hire McKnight.

McGreevey said JCETP plans to hire more ex-offenders, and “that’s a good thing.”

“We also have to walk the same walk that we ask private businesses to do, which is giving people a second-chance opportunity,” he said.